Worse Day of the Year
by Motsie of Atlantis
Summary: It's Father's Day again, and for Nell Jones it is the worse day of the year. Instead of having anything to celebrate, the day just deepens her state of depression.


**A/N** - Here I have tried to write a story without any dialogue. This is a very condensed version of a longer story that I am writing about Nell Jones

**Disclaimer:** NCIS:LA - The characters and sets are all owned by CBS, Donald P.  
Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-4. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew

**Worse Day of the Year**

Today, Father's Day, was a day that Nell Jones didn't really know what to do with. It was a day that brought out anger, shame, and love in her emotional make up.

She had a deep and haunting love for her sister - Jessica, at least that was the name she knew her by - whom she still had not been able to find. Nell had been fired from the CIA for using company assets to look for her. The furthest back she found about herself was that a midwife took her and her sister Jessica to a Catholic Church in Baltimore, The Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, and left them for the Sisters of St Francis of Assisi - The nuns couldn't take them in so they were placed with Child Protective Services. That was as far as she got before she was found out and terminated for using company assets for personal use. When she was hired by NCIS, she had promised Hetty that she would not do it while she worked there - and Nell was a woman of her word, even though her heart ached to know more about her sister.

Nell was a child of the system - few knew it because she hid it well like she hid her scars, both physical and emotional. She knew that Callen was in 37 different homes from reading his files. She was in just two - one good and the other a nightmare.

Jeffrey Wilson and his wife Sarah were the first placement of Nell and Jessica, and it was a great home. The young couple had been trying to have kids for 5 years. They finally turned to the idea of adoption and worked to foster the two orphans. Everything was great. They had a beautiful home with a big yard on the corner of the block. There was a picket fence bordering the public sidewalk and flower beds all around the two story house. For two years they were there. They brought the family luck. Eight months after they got there, Sarah became pregnant and had a baby boy. The family was lovely; the girls fit in fine.

Then one day a boy riding his bike in the street got hit by a car going down the other street. The hit and run driver left the boy in the street, bleeding profusely. Nell came to the edge of the fence to see what the big bang was about and saw the boy covered with blood. There was blood everywhere. She began to scream. Sarah come out and tried to comfort her. Nell calmed down, but that night, the

nightmares started up. Several times a night, she woke up screaming. But it also woke up the 5 month old baby. Their little baby couldn't sleep with Nell in the house, so Jeffrey and Sarah had to terminate the adoption process and returned the girls back into the system. They loved Nell and Jessica, but they loved their child more.

For years Nell had send both mother's day and father's day cards to the Wilson while she was growing up. She had hopes that they could forgive her for her nightmares and take her and Jessica back. Nell continued to wonder if Jessica ever forgave her for destroying the possibilities of a life that could have been happy ever after. But the older Nell got, the more she realized that would never happen. Jeffrey and Sarah had their own family, and she was not part of it. One year Nell just stopped sending the cards and there was absolutely no change in her life. his wife Sarah.

:):):):):):):)

The second family that Nell and Jessica were placed in was that of Brandon and Diane Rogers. It seemed like a decent placement, at least at first. Brandon had a lot of household rules that he expected the girls to follow and he was pretty strict in seeing them obeyed to the letter.

A year and a half after entering the home, Brandon started to become abusive. It first started out as punishment for chores not done to his satisfaction. He heaped a lot of verbal abuse upon Nell, trying to do the most to destroy her will through fear and intimidation. But Nell just took it all, fearing that he would turn from her and start in on Jessica.

But this only infuriated Brandon more. He vowed that he would get her to feel his power and realize his position in this family. He starts to brandish a straightedge razor in her face, vowing to leave his marks on her body. He laughed and warned her to go along with it or he will start hurting her sister. Nell didn't say a word to him, even though she was shaking with fear on the inside. She had to stay strong for Jessica's sake.

He was so careful when and where he cut her, always trying to find some place on her arms and legs that was easily covered up. He reported to Child Services that she was doing it to herself. The burns on her upper arms were explained away as where she had been clumsy. There was not any sexual abuse, at least not yet. Nell had to confirm all of his "reasons" for fear he would start doing the same thing to Jessica.

Nell was looking for some way to stop Brandon even before he starts to molest her sister, but didn't know where to turn. Finally, Brandon's pleasure in her pain was not enough and he started in on Jessica. The molestation began very small, but Nell watched it and knew where it was going to lead, what each next step of the molestation would be, because she had gone through that too. She knew she had to stop it, and the only way was to kill Brandon.

She didn't have enough time to make the plan so foolproof that no one would ever detect (or even suspect) her. When he escalated his pattern of abuse, Nell escalated her timetable too. The 10 year old child sneaked up to him while he was sleeping on the couch, and with all the strength and hatred in her small body, plunged a kitchen cleaver into his chest. Brandon woke up immediately, and got up, pulling the knife from his chest. But that was his ultimate undoing, because the knife was plugging the hole in his heart, and without it, his heart just pumped his lifeblood out of his body. He had a strange, surprised look on his face as he fell to the ground, dead.

Nell admitted what she did to police. She had no regrets because the system didn't protect her sister and forced her to take action. She had to stand trial in juvenile court because it was a planned killing. She admitted to everything, because she swore to tell the truth. With her confession, there was no way that the judge could find her not guilty, and she was sentenced to ten years in jail. Even after all that time, she still hated what Brandon had done to her and Jessica, and Father's Day just intensified those feelings of hatred and loathing.

:):):):):):):)

Nell was ashamed that she let the abuse happen - not just to her, she could deal with that - but that she didn't stop it sooner before Brandon started in on Jessica. She struggled with this, even after she was paroled and her record was expunged. One of the prison psychologists was helping her to deal with it, and continued to help her after she got out. She is still wondering if he had anything to do with the scholarship she got to St. Mary's College of Maryland.

Learning was always fun for her - she had an almost photographic memory and used it to her advantage both in and out of the classroom. She described her though process by putting it into computer terms - it was more of a three part process - the first time she read something it is like

her brain was scanning it in; then she read it again and her brain seemed to search out what file and folder to store it in; and then the third time she read it, her brain cut and pasted it in and then saved it.

Even though she didn't know it, it was her brain that caused interest in her by the many three lettered agencies of the government from her time in high school. She was unwittingly being groomed for government service. so it was no surprise when she chose in her senior year at St Mary's a political science project that assessed the importance of international intelligence cooperation in countering terrorism.

:):):):):):):)

Upon her graduation, she found a recruiter from the CIA waiting for her to take off her cap and gown before he presented her with a work contract to begin the next week at Langley. She was quite surprised at the offer, but gladly accepted it. They gave her some agent training and worldwide access to their computer network. She gladly accepted both, and worked eagerly on every problem that they placed before her. The agency showed their faith in her, twice sending her as a political analyst for a team that was "in country" in South America.

But as fast as Nell's expertise and analyst reports caused her superiors to look upon her with pride and satisfaction, it did not prevent them from sacking her when they found her looking for her sister on company time and computers.

When she poured out her heart to her psychologist later that week, he surprised her by telling her that he was transferring her to some one else. She thought it was because she no longer had a job and couldn't afford his services any longer. Nell's spirits fell even further as she began to realize how she was continuing to let Jessica down by the things she was doing.

She met with her new doctor, a Nate Getz, who seemed to know everything about her. True, he had read her files from her former doctors, but there was something different about this man. He asked for no payment. After her third session with him, he gave her a slip of paper with a Los Angeles phone number on it and told her to call, that it would change her life more than any therapy could. She had nothing to lose by calling, and that was her first encounter with Henrietta Lange.

She had been put as Intelligence Analyst on Callen's team, and worked hard to show all of them that she belonged there for the past two years. The team gradually accepted her, and gave her the family that she never had as a child. But their acceptance and love could never fill the hole in her heart that yearned for Jessica. And days like today just made the ache worse.

Nell still can't bear to have her team members know what happened to her as a child. Using the constant air conditioning needed to keep all the computers operating at optimum levels in ops as her excuse for being cold, she was always dressed in clothes that hid her physical scars, tights or leggings, long sleeved dresses and blouses, sometimes even a cardigan on top of that. Maybe someday she will lower her barriers to trust and care for a man on an emotional level. Some day, but not today.

As she ran her fingers through her hair, Nell was ashamed that Brandon is still in her thoughts. The last time she had talked with Nate, she remembered that he liked to run his fingers through her long red hair and that may be the subconscious reason why she has had it in a pixie cut for so long.

She had to stop this. The more she brooded over the day and her thoughts about the families she had and did not have, the more depressed she became. She was getting hungry, and decided to order something delivered.

After calling in her order for Asian food - one order of curried vegetable-rice soup, one order of General Tso chicken and two blackened chicken egg rolls - she decided to give Deeks a call to see if he had any tips for her on how to deal with the day. She also knew that she would have to talk with Nate again this week.


End file.
